There has been a slight modification to the fight between Chael Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva.

No, Sonnen has not been tapped to replace Rashad Evans at next week’s UFC 170 in Las Vegas, Evans’ fight with Daniel Cormier was scrapped on Wednesday. Try as he might, Sonnen couldn’t convince UFC president Dana White to make that move.

Instead, the Sonnen vs. Silva fight has been moved from its original co-main event slot at UFC 173 to a headlining position on a UFC Fight Night card on May 31 somewhere in Brazil.

A venue and city have yet to be announced, but the date is set.

The two The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3 coaches will meet in a light heavyweight bout, as long as they can refrain from any further altercations before May 31.

Sonnen and Silva have had a longstanding rivalry that spilled over into a physical altercation during the filming of TUF Brazil 3, which is just about to finish shooting.

“Wanderlei and Chael fought. Just today. They literally fought,” White said during a media luncheon with MMAWeekly.com a couple weeks ago.

He didn’t provide much detail, but said there was a physical confrontation between the two and that at least one other person from Silva’s team was involved.

“While they were fighting, one of Wanderlei’s guys sucker punched Chael,” White continued. “It went on for awhile.”

He later said that there was punishment doled out for the incident, but that we’d have to wait for the show to air on UFC Fight Pass to find out what the punishment was, since it was integrated into the reality show.

UFC 173 features middleweight champion Chris Weidman putting his belt on the line against Vitor Belfort in the night’s main event on May 24 in Las Vegas.

Well. . . UFC 173 was a stacked card but this changes things. Let's just keep thinning out these fight cards as much as possible.

This match up is probably needed to replace the proposed Overeem vs Dos Santos in Brazil which never materialized. Good grief.

02-13-2014, 02:55 PM

Spoon

Damn, if it's a Fight Night, then it will probably be on UFC Fight Pass, rather than aired on TV. Bummer.

Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen were opposing coaches on The Ultimate Fighter Brazil 3, and will fight each on May 31 in Brazil. The pair started early, reportedly scuffling during filming of the show. Silva recently spoke about it at a media event in Brazil.

"It was the worst part of the show," said Silva as translated by Guilherme Cruz for TUF-brazil-3-mma-news" target="_blank">MMAFighting. "I tell the other guys ‘don’t do this and don’t do that,’ but he drives me nuts. I even apologized to the crew. But I’m not meek and mild.

"There are things I can’t handle. The boss likes what it’s fair, he was not upset about it. When they air that on TV, you’ll see that I was right. I did what I had to do."

Silva also addressed Sonnen's use of Testosterone Replacement Therapy.

"If he needs that, what can I say?" said a laughing Silva. "I thought about using it, but my wife told me she would ask for a divorce, so I said I wouldn’t. People say he only has one ball, so if he has to use it maybe he can’t get it up."

"He showed who he really is against Rashad. He goes in there wanting to quit. When I push him, his spirit will want to go back home."

"I’ll focus on training the game from the bottom, to sweep and get on top. I won’t train too much on my takedown defense. If he takes me down, I’ll attack to submit or sweep."

02-19-2014, 11:25 AM

Sakara=Excitement

Quote:

I won’t train too much on my takedown defense.

Dafuq?

02-19-2014, 11:29 AM

KevoOnTheRadio

Quote:

"I’ll focus on training the game from the bottom, to sweep and get on top. I won’t train too much on my takedown defense. If he takes me down, I’ll attack to submit or sweep."

I think that's the best game plan for Silva

02-19-2014, 10:19 PM

joeodd2

Chael has figurative balls the size of boulders......rather ironic....

02-19-2014, 10:37 PM

Cat--Smasher

Quote:

Originally Posted by joeodd2

Chael has a figurative ball the size of a boulder......rather ironic....

Fixed that for you ;)

02-20-2014, 12:35 AM

Pasha K

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sakara=Excitement

Dafuq?

It may be the right choice actually. Wandy may train TDD 5 hours a day and he will still get taked down by Sonnen, and he knows it.
So instead of training that, he will train on how to escape from bad positions.
But still, I think Wand will be in big trouble if the fight goes to the ground. Even in the stand up anything can happen, his chin can fail him at any time.